We all fell silent at that, in wonder, in fear. I couldn’t imagine such a time ever coming to pass. But I understood this instinctively: because I existed, the end of mortal life—the rebirth of mortal life, into immortality—was possible. And if it was possible…
“I’ll work to make that happen,” I said, and even just this thought made me feel happy and right and full of light again.
Then I thought of something and glanced at Ia, and bit my lip. “But, um, maybe you could help me, Sibling, until then? I mean—you stopped me, when I would’ve spun myself away to nothing.”
He drew back, with an offended air. “I’ve done enough babysitting, Shill, thank you.” And with that he vanished.
I slumped, disappointed. Yeine shook her head and got to her feet, then leaned down to murmur in my ear.
“How convenient that you’re not a baby anymore. Isn’t it?”
I blinked, and then a slow grin spread across my lips. She winked, and straightened again. Well, then.
I put my hands on the table and pushed to my feet. “OK,” I said. “There’s lots to do! You mortals have to fix all the stuff that’s wrong with your realm, if you’re going to make it to the end of the universe.” I waggled a finger at Mikna, who lifted an eyebrow skeptically. Then I pointed at Eino. “You! Come with me. We have to find the other babies and make sure they do not wreck stuff.”
A pained look crossed his face; his little pet moon glowed white with amusement. “You barely know what you’re doing yourself, Shill.”
“That is beside the point. I know more than you do; that means it’s my job to teach.” I put my hands on my hips, pleased with this plan. “I can help them find their natures, too! That’s what I do now, see.”
“I’m not certain this is wise,” said Fahno; she had the same look on her face as Eino.
“Empowerment does not always wait for wisdom,” said Yeine, “though that will doubtless come with time in Shill’s case. Hopefully soon.”
“Yes, but will we survive until then?”
“Hey! I’m right here.” I shook my head, then went over to Eino. “OK. Calm down about being a god. You can still do mortal stuff if you want. Marry and make babies and lead revolutions all you want. Right?”
Eino blinked in surprise, then looked at Fahno, who stared back at him as well. He bit his lip and looked away for a moment. “Beba.”
Fahno took a deep breath and stood. “If you want nothing more to do with us, I will understand.”
He flinched. “No! I’m still Darre, Beba. I’m still clan.”
She hesitated, lowered her eyes. “You have a new clan now.”
He set his jaw. “I have an old clan.” He went over to her, took her hands. She squeezed his hands, her eyes overbright, and Arolu came over, too. Eino folded his arms round them both, shaking, and there were lots of tears and whispers of things that probably should have been said long before.
Quietly, beyond us all, I felt Yeine vanish, and knew why. Eino might be Darre now, but Fahno was right; his attachment to his mortal life would not last long. It was as Zhakkarn had said, and as Yeine had learned herself: they were too small, too ephemeral, to grasp the whole of what we were. In the end, we would always leave them behind.
But that would happen on its own, with Eino. I didn’t need to push. Let him make his own farewells to mortality; he had forever, after all. And after all, someday mortalkind would be better. I wouldn’t push them, either—but when they were ready, I would be there, waiting. I would help them all I could.
I won’t push any of you, see? I didn’t give you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Your power is yours; it has always been there. I’m just going to help you reach it. What you do with it, from there on, is up to you.
Now come along, babies! Today I will teach you how not to smash planets by accident. Oh! And also: how to tell stories the Proper Way. You always have to finish with THE END, or Papa will give you such a look.
THE END.
extras
meet the author
N. K. Jemisin
N. K. JEMISIN is a career counselor, political blogger, and would-be gourmand living in New York City. She’s been writing since the age of ten, although her early works will never see the light of day. Find out more about the author at nkjemisin.com.
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE AWAKENED KINGDOM,
look out for
THE FIFTH SEASON
Book One of the Broken Earth
by N. K. Jemisin
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS. AGAIN.
Three terrible things happen in a single day.
Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world’s sole continent, a great red rift is torn that spews enough ash to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
But this is the Stillness, a land long familiar with struggle, where orogenes—those who wield the power of the earth as a weapon—are feared far more than the long cold night. Essun has remembered herself, and she will have her daughter back.
She does not care if the world falls apart around her. Essun will break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.
The first novel in a new series by award-winning author N. K. Jemisin, where a mother struggles to find her daughter in a post-apocalyptic world.
1
The straw is so warm that Damaya doesn’t want to come out of it. Like a blanket, she thinks through the bleariness of half-sleep. Like the quilt her great-grandmother once sewed for her out of patches of uniform cloth. Years ago Muh Dear had worked for the Brevard militia as a seamstress, and got to keep the scraps from any repairs that required new cloth. The blanket she made for Damaya is mottled and dark, blue and green in rippling bands like columns of marching men, but it came from Muh Dear’s hands, so Damaya doesn’t care that it’s ugly. It smells sweet and gray and a bit fusty, so it is easy to imagine that the straw—which smells mildewy and like old manure with a hint of fruity, fungal sweetness—is Muh’s blanket. Even though the actual blanket is back in Damaya’s room, on the bed where she left it, and in which she will never sleep again.
She can hear voices outside the straw pile now: Mama and someone else talking as they draw closer. A rattle-creak as the barn door is unlocked, and they come inside; another rattle as the door shuts behind them. Then Mother raises her voice and calls, “DamaDama?”
Damaya curls up tighter, clenching her teeth. She hates that stupid nickname. She hates the way Mother says it, all light and sweet, like it’s actually a term of endearment and not a lie.
When Damaya doesn’t respond, Mother says: “She can’t have gotten out. My husband checked all the barn locks himself.”
“Nothing is secure for her kind.” This voice belongs to a man. Not her father or older brother, or the comm headman, or anyone she recognizes. This man’s voice is deep, and he speaks with an accent like none she’s ever heard: sharp and heavy, with long drawled o’s and a’s and crisp beginnings and ends to every word. Smart-sounding. Dangerous. He jingles faintly as he walks, so much that she wonders whether he’s wearing a big set of keys. Or perhaps he has a lot of money in his pockets? This thought makes Damaya curl in on herself, sick and trembling, because of course she’s heard the other children in creche whisper of child-markets in faraway cities of beveled stone. Not all places in the world are as civilized as the Nomidlats. She laughed off the whispers then, but everything is different now.
“Here,” says the man’s voice, not far off now. “Fresh spoor, I think.”
Mother makes a sound of disgust, and Damaya burns in shame as she realizes they’ve seen the corner she uses for a bathroom. It smells terrible there, even though she
’s been throwing straw over it each time. “Squatting on the ground like an animal. I raised her better.”
“Is there a toilet here?” asks the child buyer, in a tone of polite curiosity. “Did you give her a bucket?”
Silence from Mother, which stretches on, and belatedly Damaya realizes the man has reprimanded Mother with those quiet questions. It isn’t the sort of reprimand Damaya is used to. The man hasn’t raised his voice or called anyone names. Yet Mother stands still and silenced as surely as if he’d followed the words with a smack to the head.
A giggle bubbles up in her throat, and at once she crams her fist into her mouth to stop it from spilling out. They’ll hear Damaya laugh at her mother’s embarrassment, and then the child buyer will know what a terrible child she really is. But is that such a bad thing? Maybe then her parents will get less for her. That alone almost makes her let the giggles loose—or screams so the buyer will think there’s something wrong with her—because Damaya hates her parents, she hates them, and anything that will make them suffer makes her feel better.
Then she bites down on her hand, hard, and hates herself, because of course they’re selling Damaya if she can think such thoughts.
Footsteps nearby. “Cold in here,” says the man.
“Not freezing,” says Mother, and Damaya almost giggles again at her sullen, defensive tone. Maybe the child buyer will smack Mother for giving him attitude.
But the child buyer ignores Mother. His footsteps come closer. Damaya can feel each step the way she feels everyone else’s steps, a beat against her eardrums with a faint echo that goes down into the barn’s dirt floor. She has always felt things in this two-layered way, and only lately has she come to understand what it means. His steps are heavier than most, though, echoing through the rock that lies a few feet below the soil, almost like he’s trying to make the earth shake. She’s never felt anyone whose steps go that deep.
And now he’s coming up the ladder, to the loft where she lies under the straw.
“Ah,” he says, reaching the top. “It’s warmer up here.”
“Dama!” Mother sounds furious now. “Get down here!”
Damaya scrunches herself up tighter under the straw and says nothing. The child buyer’s footsteps pace closer.
“You needn’t be afraid,” he says in that rolling voice. Closer. She feels the reverberation of his voice through the wood and down to the ground and into the rock and back again. Closer. “I’ve come to help you, Damaya Strongback.”
Another thing she hates, that he calls her by her use-name. She doesn’t have a strong back at all, and neither does Mother. All Strongback means is that some of her female ancestors were lucky enough to join a comm but too undistinguished to earn a more secure place within it. Strongbacks get dumped same as commless when times get hard, her brother Chaga has told her, to tease her. Especially if a comm has too much labor and not enough specialization, and especially during a Season. Of course, Chaga is a Resistant, like Father. All comms like to have them around no matter how hard the times, in case of sickness and famine and such.
The man’s footsteps stop just outside the straw pile. “You needn’t be afraid,” he says again, more softly now. Mother is still down on the ground level; she probably can’t hear him. “I won’t let your mother hurt you.”
Damaya inhales.
She’s not stupid. The man is a child buyer, and child buyers do terrible things. But because he has said these words, and because some part of Damaya is tired of being afraid and angry, she uncurls. She pushes her way through the soft warm pile and sits up, peering out at the man through loose strands of hair and dirty straw.
He is as strange-looking as he sounds, and not from anywhere near Palela. His skin is almost white, it’s so paper-pale; he must smoke and curl up in strong sunlight. He has long limp hair, which together with the skin might mark him as an Arctic, though the color of it—a deep heavy black, like the soil near an old blow—doesn’t fit. Damaya’s creche teacher says Arctics go in more for brown or orange or yellow hair. Eastern Coasters’ hair is black like that, and when it’s curly it’s the next best thing to ashblow hair, but people from the east have black skin. And he’s big, not small like Arctics are supposed to be—taller and with broader shoulders than Father. But where Father’s big shoulders join a big chest and a big belly, this man sort of tapers. Everything about the stranger seems lean and elongated. Nothing about him makes racial sense.
But what strikes Damaya most is the child buyer’s eyes. They’re white, or nearly so. She can see the whites of his eyes, and then a silvery-gray disk of color that she can barely distinguish from the white, even up close. The pupils of his eyes are wide in the barn’s dimness, and startling amid the desert of colorlessness.
She’s heard of eyes like these, which are called icewhite in stories and stonelore. They’re rare, and always an ill omen. But then the child buyer smiles at Damaya, and she doesn’t even think twice before she smiles back. She trusts him immediately. She knows she shouldn’t, but she does.
“And here we are,” he says, still speaking softly so that Mother won’t hear. “Damaya Strongback, I presume?”
“Dama,” she says, automatically. People she likes get to call her that. “Just once, not DamaDama. I hate that.”
He inclines his head gracefully, and extends a hand to her. “So noted. Will you join us, then, Dama?”
Damaya doesn’t move and he does not grab her. He just stays where he is, patient as stone, offering and not taking. Ten breaths pass. Twenty. Damaya knows she’ll have to go with him, but she likes that he makes it feel like a choice. So at last she takes his hand and lets him pull her up. He keeps her hand while she dusts off as much of the straw as she can, and then he tugs her closer, just a little. “One moment.”
“Hnh?” But the child buyer’s other hand is already behind her head, pressing two fingers into the base of her skull so quickly and deftly that she doesn’t startle. He shuts his eyes for a moment, shivers minutely, and then exhales, letting her go.
“Duty first,” he says, cryptically. She touches the back of her head, confused and still feeling the lingering sensation of his fingers’ pressure. “Now let’s head downstairs.”
“What did you do?”
“Just a little ritual of sorts. Come now; I need to tell your mother you’ll be leaving with me.”
So it really is true. Damaya bites her lip, and when the man turns to head back to the ladder, she follows a pace or two behind.
“Well, that’s that,” says the child buyer as they reach Mother on the ground floor. “If you could assemble a package for her—one or two changes of clothing, any travel food you can provide, a coat—we’ll be on our way.”
Mother stops glaring at Damaya, in surprise. “We gave away her coat.”
“Gave it away?”
He speaks mildly, but Mother looks abruptly uncomfortable. “She’s got a cousin who needed it. We don’t all have wardrobes full of fancy clothes to spare. And—” Here Mother hesitates, glancing at Damaya. Damaya just looks away. She doesn’t want to see if Mother looks sorry for giving away the coat. She especially doesn’t want to see if Mother’s not sorry.
“And you’ve heard that orogenes don’t feel cold the way the rest of us do,” says the man, with a weary sigh. “That’s a myth. I assume you’ve seen your daughter take cold before.”
“Yes, but.” Mother catches Damaya looking back this time. Both of them flinch. “But I thought…”
That Damaya might be faking it. That was what she’d said to Damaya that first day, after they got home from creche and while they were setting her up in the barn. Mother had raged, her face streaked with tears, while Father just sat there, silent and grim. Damaya had hidden it from them, Mother said, hidden everything, pretended to be a child when she was really a monster, that was what monsters did, she had always known there was something wrong with Damaya, she had always been such a little liar—
The man shakes his head. “Nev
ertheless, she will need some protection against the cold. It will grow warmer as we approach the Equatorials, but we’ll be weeks on the road getting there.”
Mother’s jaw flexes. “So you’re really taking her to Yumenes, then.”
“Of course I—” And then the man stares at her. “Ah.” He glances at Damaya. They both look at Damaya, their gazes like an itch. She squirms. “And even thinking I was coming to kill your daughter, you had the comm headman summon me.”
Mother tenses. “Don’t. It wasn’t, I didn’t—” At her sides, her hands flex. Then she bows her head, as if she is ashamed, which Damaya knows is a lie. Mother isn’t ashamed of anything she’s done. If she were, why did she do it?
“Ordinary people can’t take care of… of children like her,” says Mother, very softly. Her eyes dart to Damaya’s, once, and away, fast. “She almost killed a boy at school. We’ve got another child, and neighbors, and… she’s dangerous. I have to think of what’s best for the whole family, the whole comm…” She trails off. Then abruptly she squares her shoulders, lifting her chin. “That’s any citizen’s duty, isn’t it?”
“Mmm. And the Empire thanks you for your sacrifice and service.” The words are praise. The tone is not. Damaya looks at the man again, confused now. Child buyers don’t kill children. And what’s this about going to the Equatorials? Those lands are far, far to the south.
Then the child buyer glances at Damaya and, somehow, understands that she does not understand. His face softens, which should be impossible with those frightening eyes of his.
“To Yumenes,” the man says to Mother, to Damaya. “Yes. She’s young enough, and therefore I’m taking her to the Fulcrum, where she will be trained to use her curse.”
The Inheritance Trilogy Page 124
